Two-fifths of Americans (41%) visited food and cooking websites in November, up 2 million unique visitors from October, during the seasonal peak in activity for these sites. Scripps Networks’ websites, which includes Food Network and Food.com, were among the top online brands in the food and cooking category. Combined, these sites attracted 22 million unique visitors. Allrecipes was next on the menu, attracting 17 million unique visitors.

Some would-be-chefs may have needed a little extra help in the kitchen, turning to websites of food brands like Kraft (8 million unique visitors) and Pillsbury (5 million), or ordering dinner delivery via Pizza Hut (6 million).

Regardless of which food and cooking sites were visited, 86 million consumers spent an average of 25 minutes using these websites—just long enough to prepare or cook a meal.

Top Food and Cooking Websites by Unique U.S. Audience in November 2013

Brand/Website

Unique Audience

Average Time Spent (HH:MM:SS)

All Food and cooking sites

86,350,000

0:25:30

Scripps Networks Food Websites

22,433,000

0:10:37

Allrecipes

17,397,000

0:06:38

About.com Food

9.249,000

0:02:56

Kraft Foods

8,110,000

0:05:38

Betty Crocker

7,554,000

0:05:19

Pizza Hut

6,198,000

0:09:22

Starbucks Coffee

6,164,000

0:08:26

Pillsbury

5,268,000

0:05:45

MyRecipes.com Network

5,167,000

0:07:10

Cooks.com

5,005,000

0:03:51

Read as: Scripps Networks Food websites had 22.4 million unique visitors during November who spent an average of 10 minutes 37 seconds per person using its sites via Web browsers.
Source: Nielsen.

As online consumers prepared for the holiday shopping season, most surfed to search, social, and shopping sites in November. During the month, Google was the most popular Web brand, attracting 161 million unique visitors to its websites. Amazon had the largest monthly increase among the top 10 sites, up 3 million unique visitors from October, while opening its doors to nearly 85 million consumers during the month that includes the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping holidays. Looking at the overall online audience, 210 million Americans accessed the Internet in November 2013, spending more than 27 hours per person surfing the Web.